


dogma

by yourlocalbirb



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Dragon's Dogma
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21870100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlocalbirb/pseuds/yourlocalbirb
Summary: dog·ma/ˈdôɡmə/nouna principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.2.synonymsteaching, belief, conviction, tenet, principle, ethic, precept, maxim, article of faith, canon, law, rule; creed, credo, code of belief, set of beliefs, set of principles, doctrine, ideology, orthodoxyblind faith, unquestioning belief, certainty, invincible conviction, unchallengeable conviction, arrogant convictionOrigin: mid 16th century: via late Latin from Greek dogma ‘opinion’, from dokein ‘seem good, think’.Desmond had never put much stock into his parent's teachings.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30





	dogma

Desmond had never put much stock in his parent’s teachings. Two crazy cults, fighting over apocalyptic drivel? Yeah, _right_. He’d made fun of it, laughed at the world, laughed at his past, laughed at his parents, the Farm and their crazy, far-out tin-foil hatted paranoia right up until the moment Abstergo agents in tactical gear came sliding out of the dark alleyway in a scene straight from his parent’s cautionary tales.

* * *

_He is standing in a marketplace- no- a garden- a garden, and before it, a ruined, smoldering castle. There is someone talking, words fading in and out in an indistinct manner as if heard distantly, somewhere far away, and yet the voice booms as though all around him, reverberates in his chest._

_He stares around the garden in confusion, searching for the voice’s owner. Nothing. The ruined building stands in stark contrast to the lush greenery, which remains ...untouched by whatever disaster had struck._

_It is a garden, a verdant paradise- then, suddenly his vision swims, or the world shudders, and it is a marketplace again. There are people all around him and he cannot recall where they came from- and they-_

_The voice drones on, unheeding of his growing panic._

_“_ **-welcome the end with arms outstretched-** ” 

_The people, they-_

_They have no faces. Or, well, rather, they do- but they keep blurring, changing in a way that makes him ill at the mere sight of it._

_Something is wrong- Something is_ **_very_ ** _wrong. The world flickers and lurches violently in response to his rising fear, and he stumbles as the faceless not-people suddenly swarm him, shadows and bright glowing golden lights in the places where their eyes should be- would be, if they were human- if they were_ **_real_** _._

_“_ \- **others come to face death incarnate, arms in hand.** _”_

_The ground beneath him shakes and bucks wildly with a booming, thundering sound, not from ...whatever madness is going on- but from the force of a massive, dark blur- a hand, a hand! He recognizes distantly amid the rising panic, tipped with claws nearly as long as he is tall- as it erupts from the shadows of the ruined castle and slams into the tiled floor of the courtyard. He stares at the dark scales in terror, helpless to move as another limb follows after it, crushing the delicate tilework to dust beneath it’s massive bulk. He is dimly aware of something that he thinks might be a head snaking out of the darkness above him, but every instinct in his body is telling him not-_

_-to. look. up. Against his will, like his body doesn’t even belong to him- he does. Looks up, and straight into the sickly-bright eyes of an impossible, ageless horror. The beast is near black as night, but not quite- where light hits its scales, some gleam a deep red. There is a rumble that goes beyond sound and vibrates in his chest as it opens its mouth, and he realizes, finally, that the voice is coming from_ **_it._ **

  
  


_On instinct, he pulls one hand back and clasps it across his chest, as though he could make the reverberations stop if he just applied enough pressure- and his vision flashes and flickers an ominous red that he barely comprehends through the renewed terror that grips him.  
  
Why can't he feel a beat? _

_He has no- he can’t feel- he claws at his- no, not his -their, this_ other's _chest, and underneath the cloth nails scrape against the ridges of a mass of scar-tissue on a body that he now understands in no way belongs to_ **_him._** _The world warps and fractures violently, and there is a deep, pervasive droning noise, like a distant alarm._

_The garden is suddenly not a garden, he realizes, but a dull, blue void, with the castle and the dragon and the trees and the grass all bizarrely suspended in it._

_And then, as he struggled to comprehend this fact, the dragon rears its great head back_ , _and the fortress’ roof does not so much as shudder and then burst apart as the beast shrugs it aside like it was made of paper, so much as it simply_ shatters. _Parts of it flicker away , and vanish into the ether, while others hang suspended in the air._

_And then, for a moment, despite the world crumbling into fractals and gleaming lines of light and code around him, he is helplessly, terribly small beneath the immense shadow of endless black wings._

_The dragon's maw gapes into a hideous smile as it speaks;_

**_“_ ** **I ask again, what is your** **_purpose_ ** **here,** **_Arisen?”_ **

* * *

Lucy Stillman is... odd. He knows it from the moment he first sees her face, hovering above him in the Animus. She is pleasant enough- for someone working for his kidnappers anyways.

He takes to watching her, well both of them really, as she interacts with Vidic, and the more he watches, the more his suspicions grow.

She isn't... emotionless, persay- she got angry with Vidic on his behalf, smiled and even laughed at a poor attempt at a joke, but there was a stiffness to her that went beyond the simplest explanation of a taciturn, dour personality altogether- a lack of force and weight behind those emotions that set alarm bells ringing in his head, unnerved him for a reason he couldn't quite put his finger on.

At least, not right away.

* * *

Distantly, he can hear Vidic laughing- _laughing_ , actually _laughing_ , t _he man really does fit the mad scientist villain trope to a T, doesn’t he?_ he thinks, in some distant part of his mind that isn’t gibbering with panic at the sight of the implausible monstrosity before him.

This, he knows, rationally cannot be the same Great Dragon as he’d seen in the Animus- it’s scales are a pale, sickly white where the other’s had been a dark, dried-blood blackish-red- and for a moment he lets himself hope that it is possibly _just_ a normal drake, and then abandons the idea just as quickly when the beast keeps getting _bigger_ as it approaches, and he realizes with a sinking feeling that it was not simply rather small for it’s kind so much as it was just much farther away than he’d thought-

And then, suddenly, there is no room for thinking at all, because the Dragon simply does not stop, and crashes through the windows of the Abstergo building, taking the outer half of the building with it as it lands, broad wings carelessly scattering the rubble aside.

* * *

_This is it,_ he thinks. _I’m going to die here._

It's pupils dilate and then contract, the dull grey pulsing a brilliant gold- almost the same gold as his family's second sight. It's eyes lock onto him, transfixed, and Desmond stares back up at it in horrified fascination before recoiling in horror as a barrage of images and words assaults his mind. _You-they-he. Chosen. Choose. Strength, such strength- the will to live Strong to bear the world's weight-_ And then the jumbled cacophony of concepts and images bursts forth in spoken words from behind the beast's ghastly razor-wall of teeth;

" **_You._ ** " It rumbles, in a language which he distantly recognizes as Arabic yet somehow, inexplicably, _understands_. It lashes it's great tail, and turns ponderously to face Desmond where he's pressed himself pathetically up against the Animus’ side.

" _I will show_ **_you_ ** _,_ " It proclaims feverishly. " _the true nature of reality._ "

" _I will speak to_ **_you_ ** _of Gods, and the nature of Man._ "

It stalked forward, shaking the already ruined building to it's very foundations with each word, and he pressed himself further back against the machine in vain, the edge digging into his spine uncomfortably.

" _I am-will be your connecting thread, your guide. Know me, that you might know the Truth._ "

" _My name is Altair._ " The beast loomed over him, stretching one massive claw out ponderously to hover over his chest. “ _And I will be your hatching-shell.”_

The claw-tip, bigger than his entire head, hangs in the space above him for one heartbeat, two- and then the Dragon smiles, a grotesque, feral snarl of a grin, and the claw descends, and Desmond's world explodes with pain.  
  



End file.
